No matter your opinion of AOPA or Angel Flight, you really must agree that the way CASA has treated the General Aviation industry has been nothing if not contemptuous and arrogant. Congratulations to Ben Morgan who continues to take the fight up to the regulator and the politicians in a way that I can't remember AOPA doing in my 28 years in the industry.

CASA has, at the stroke of a pen, eliminated Charter effective March 2021 and with their un-consulted Community Service Flight regulations all but eliminated Angel Flight as an important VOLUNTEER community service.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would suggest that the RAAA, Chaired by Regional Express, and the ASAP, Chaired by the pseudo-charity (heavily govt funded thru charter contracts and donations) RFDS, have the blood of the General Aviation Industry on their hands.
...oh and by the way, CASA has also eliminated "Charter" from their definition of "General Aviation"... because a Baron or a C206 or a Chieftain flown on charter is "Air Transport" just like a B747.

As everyone slowly grows up and realises that aviation regulatory standards in Australia have always been set, and will always be set, primarily on the basis of politics rather than any objective criteria, people need to decide, individually, what to do about that.

What struck me particularly about Mr Morgan’s spray was the statement that: “I’ve always voted for...”. I switched off and remain uninterested in whatever party he’s always voted for. The primary reason Australia is where it is on so many fronts - and in particular aviation - is that most people have “always voted for” one the major parties.

The problem is that a vote for any of the major parties is a vote for CASA to do whatever it wants. It’s a vote for the status quo. The major parties don’t care about aviation because it’s been conveniently abrogated to the regulator.

If you really want to make a difference, don’t send an email to any politician. Send an email to Dick Smith urging him to urge members of the public to vote for anyone but a member of a major party, until specified changes have been made. Population, aviation, gardening or pencil widths - doesn’t matter a shit about the merits of the changes. Just say what you want, Dick.

If Dick does that, things might change. Members of the major parties will agree to do what Dick wants so as to preserve the status quo - on the grounds of safety or whatever facade needs to be put over it - and you’ll all be able to return to the practice of voting for whichever of the dumb or dumber parties to whom you’re passionately dedicated.

Otherwise, resign yourself to pretty much more of the same until around 2021, when you’ll have another opportunity to demonstrate you’ve learned something.

I sent a submission to McCormack and asked that he forward it to CASA. CASA did not publish it as they said that I had not requested publication. Mr M McCormack

Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of the national Party

Attempts by CASA to introduce more complications in the operations of Angel Flight

Dear Mr McCormack,

For many many years CASA has in theory been answerable to a National Party Minister but in fact has run its own race over that time. I accused John Anderson of allowing CASA to run amok, uncontrolled, when I was President of AOPA. You are, unfortunately, so far keeping up the tradition.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has been rewriting the safety regulations for over twenty five years with miserable progress. There are simple reasons for this. CASA likes the difficult regulations that we have. By proposing ridiculous regulations they can sit back getting paid while the industry beats itself to death opposing them.

There are/always were two ways of stopping this nonsense. The most obvious would have been to use the US FAR's. A large aviation country with a strong aviation industry probably already has invented the wheel. These regulations are not sufficiently proscriptive for our CASA. Twenty years ago the CASA CEO Mick Toller claimed that the US regs were about to be rewritten so shouldn't be copied. Hasn't happened yet.

The other way is to use an independent panel to write the regs, not CASA. One does not allow the police to write the laws of the country, does one? All industry representatives serve on various panels and Boards in their own time, and have been beggared and exhausted doing so. I suggest that all CASA representatives also volunteer to serve on these boards and panels in their own time. Then we would see some progress

I note Shane Carmody has trotted out the old homily that CASA is the police and nobody likes police. Mick Toller used that one too. That is just not so. It would take a book to do it but the contrary evidence is everywhere. Ask Dick Smith for example

Space precludes a comprehensive list of CASA's shortcomings but here are two typical examples.

1. After consultation CASA introduced, many years ago the Biennial Flight Review (BFR). It was all training, it could not be failed, so who could be against that? Subsequently, CASA, without notice or consultation, changed the name (to is it AFR?) and now it can be failed. Completely dishonest.

2. Also without consultation , CASA stopped engineers flying out to a property to do required maintenance . Such maintenance now has to be done in an approved workshop, at greatly increased costs to the aircraft owners. This was at the behest of the big maintenance shops without any evidence that the fly in guys were not getting the result. No consultation whatsoever. In the States of course no such regulation exists .

My point is that CASA is, in this case, as ever, looking for more control and complexity even when such control is not justified. It has always annoyed the pedants in CASA that organisations like Angel Flight, (which has in fact an amazingly good safety record), are not under CASA's direct control. I well recall, many many years ago an aviation nonentity called Keith Campbell at a public meeting attended by Sir Donald Anderson, was told by Sir Donald that "my officers are only interested in safety . " Keith responded. "Your officers Sir are only interested in their career paths and their superannuation." There was much agreement from those attending. Uproarious acclamation in fact. Little has changed.

The latest attempt to exercise more direct control over Angel Flight and to add complexity to their operations, with no proven safety benefit, is being done in typical CASA underhanded fashion. Not a by a Regulation, which could be "disallowed" and debated in parliament but as I understand , as a "Direction", which does not have Parliamentary oversight. This was put up for comment over the Christmas period with, initially a two week (later extended to four weeks) comment period. How brazen is that!.

I can only quote my good friend Bill Hamilton who said to CASA representatives so many times when we both served on the old "Program Advisory Panel"

Carbody , the Arrogant, if he replies will just spruik the usual motherhood bs we have all become so accustomed to. And I would posit, it will probably be written by Dr Discrepancy, so expect convoluted legal acrobatic thinking to justify the unjustifiable..

Campbell's comments from way back still apply. What a fabulous gravy train is CAsA !

Bill, it looks like it’s been done by legislative instrument that is, therefore, disallowable by the Parliament. However, the timing of the making of the instrument is such that it can do maximum damage for a long period of time because of the small number of sitting days of the Parliament before the election and the distraction to other matters during those days. It could be many months before 15 sitting days pass, and the likelihood of a motion of disallowing being moved and heard and voted on in the few sitting days before the election is quite remote.

Doesn’t alter the fact that the consultation was a sham and the justification for the change is a nonsense, though.

If this submission below was authored by the Laura Henwood who is leading the yet to be completed ATSB investigation into the volunteer flight crash at Mt Gambier then in my view she should have declared her interest and also in my view she is dangerously close to showing a lack of the impartiality that one might reasonably expect in the circumstances?

If it is a Henwood connected with ATSB, I wonder what the submission would be in response to an investigation of a Charter accident (e.g. Beaver VH-NOO and 6 deaths) or an investigation of an RPT accident (e.g. Metro VH-TFU and 15 deaths). The “nearest and dearest” of the POB those aircraft didn’t want them to end up dead, either.

Perhaps Henwood should be advocating for a standard called “GFF”: Guaranteed Fatality Free.

Or perhaps an objective analysis of the causes of each accident might lead to the conclusion that the problem is not so much the standards, but compliance with them, in which case the practical solution is more education rather than more regulation. Heck, an objective analysis might even conclude that the unnecessary complexity and overhead costs imposed by the regulatory regime is why the percentage of private pilots with IFR ratings in Australia is so low compared with the USA.

One thing that fascinates me is the complete lack of knee jerk from CASA in response to the number of fatalities and near misses in commercial ballooning operations. There have been many over recent decades, but you don’t hear ‘boo’ from CASA or the ATSB about ‘upping’ commercial ballooning standards.

I’m not saying I’m advocating for an upping of commercial ballooning standards. I’m just wondering what’s so special about ballooning that each new fatality or near miss is apparently met with a regulatory ‘shrug’.

But with parachuting I thought the continuing fiction that CASA allows to perpetuate is that all parachuting operations are private. Doesn’t CASA issue commercial balloon pilot licences and AOCs for ballooning operations?

(I realise that a tourist who pays for a tandem parachute jump and a tourist who pays for a balloon ride are each a passenger being carried in return for money and there is no safety basis for the regulator to treat one as private and other as commercial. But safety doesn’t have much to do with what the regulator does (as opposed to the regulator’s rhetoric).)

Now, Just WHERE did I put that definition of 'CONSULTATION' by Commissioner G Smith in the IRC...Way back then - in that FS Union (CPSU) case....???

Oh! Hang On ….'Ere 'Tis.....

What is consultation? A commonly recognised definition is that consultation involves “more than a mere exchange of information. For consultation to be effective the participants must be contributing to the decision-making process not only in appearance, but in fact.” (Commissioner Smith, Australian Industrial Relations Commission. 12 March, 1991)

Our view is that community service flights have an accident/incident rate significantly higher than private operations.

Community service flights are private operations.

The circular nonsense that CASA trots out to justify its decisions messes with my head. It’s beyond Orwellian.

Does CASA really believe that the number of accidents in community services flights in Australia can reasonably be considered statistically significant? Really? Have they spoken to an expert in statistics or an actuary? Ever?

In 100% of cases involving fatalities in community service flights in Australia, the pilot in command was male. It inexorably follows that the regulatory standards for male pilots must be increased and more stringently enforced compared with those for non-male pilots. The statistics speak for themselves.

I don’t know why CASA just doesn’t tell the truth: This is a knee jerk reaction as a consequence of pressure from one quarter, which reaction will be disallowed as a consequences of pressure from another quarter.

This is what happens when you make the police the makers of the road rules and the speed limit.